ConnectWise Automate: Utilizing Managed Service Catalog

The Managed service catalog allows you to dynamically track software deployments and update CW Manage with additions for those counts. This is super useful for any application that you license out or don’t have a way to integrate it directly into CW Manage.

Step-by-Step:

1. Today I wanted to go over a small background detail that really isn’t utilized across MSPs but it could help with automated billing or even updating your numbers and ConnectWise for software deployments or other things that you can push through Automate let’s get into it.
2. As we open up Automate here what we’re looking for is the Managed Service Catalog.
3. To find that and you may have heard it maybe ages ago – under System, under General, Managed Service Catalog here.
4. I went ahead and added a just an example SKU here, it can be anything you want it just has to have some number this is not related to anything, but it could be if you’d like it to be.
5. It doesn’t do anything other than this is what we’re going to call it inside of Automate, this is the name of the managed service so Huntress or AV maybe and then you can assign based on a computer contact network device etc.
6. Most cases if it’s like a software deployment or things you want to keep track of that don’t have an API or some integration you would just type computer, of course you can give a description if you’d like I did not just for this video, but of course it does help if you do want to do that later on and you need to come back and do like a clean-up.
7. So I always recommend it even if you just say testing or can delete or try to be specific about what it is and then hit save, that’ll reload and as you can see there’s maybe a couple in here either from other videos or something that we’ve done in the past.
8. So then the next steps to be able to actually utilize that is you would assign that either at the group, or what you should do is under the ConnectWise Manage plugin.
9. And once this loads here you can come down to the actual agreement mapping and assign that to that client, so if you don’t want to do it on a group based like you don’t want to set up an auto-join search for like software deployment tracking things like that you can set that on the group here.
10. And then what I’ve done is I’ve come under here and under managed service template hit new template and i’ll just edit the one I created here really quick. So I’ve given it a name. It doesn’t really matter what you want to call it this is all inside of Automate just some sync or automated service name and then it will list all of your managed services in here. These are the ones that you have created like basically custom services not the ones associated with the managed workstation etc.
11. These are the ones that you created custom the ones right here this asset template that’s what is your fully managed your service plan your gold bronze et cetera that’s what directly links to or ConnectWise manages database.
12. So inside of here I’ve given it just a blank name Alex’s contract I found that Alex’s software deployment the thing that I wanted to keep track of what I can do from there let’s say it was a spam filter or you know before whatever is out there that I wanted to keep track of that’s deployed, I would just find that product that’s in ConnectWise so it would it is kind of linked but you’re selecting a specific thing.
13. So let’s say I’ll leave it on spam connect filter and then the agreement type doesn’t really matter but it’s it matters what you’re updating inside of Automate or inside of ConnectWise manage.
14. So if my gold plan gets this then I would leave it as connect my product, connect filter, manage services gold, hit save, and now this is a template.
15. So now when I come back here and actually, select Alex’s contract and hit save, then as that gets tallied up per se, then that gets counted and added as additions for that template or that product inside of ConnectWise Manage.
16. If you want to do it on a group you just have to come over to groups and I’ll just pick all agents and on the far right here this manage services. So what you can do is in order to kind of sudo or emulate an API tally or reconciliation I would just hit add, and then I would find the software thing that I want and of course, you can limit it by search here especially if you’re on like an all agents group I would definitely recommend making a new group, or even doing this on a managed 24×7 or whatever your service plan group is when I hit add any computer that’s in here will get assigned out and then that way each time that they get tallied in they’ll rack up another tally point as a new addition and kind of Automate that process going forward.